Lorinda de Roulet, baseball pioneer and former Mets president, dead at 95

Lorinda de Roulet, the first woman to oversee day-to-day operations of a major league team when she chaired the Mets board of directors in the 1970s, died on Oct. 26, according to club historian Jay Horwitz.

She was 95.

In November 1978, de Roulet succeeded M. Donald Grant in running the Mets’ daily operations. She remained in the role for one season before the team was sold.

Her involvement with the Mets began in 1975 when she became team president upon the death of her mother, Joan Whitney Payson, the club’s original owner.

Payson was the first woman to buy majority control of a North American sports franchise rather than inherit it. She also served as the team president beginning with the Mets’ inception in 1962.

“It never occurred to me that I would wind up running the team,” de Roulet told The New York Times in 1978. “I guess I thought mother would keep running things and my husband was interested too.”